Best movies like I Saw the Sun
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
In the southeast region of Turkey, the Altun family lives in a small mountainside village plagued by a 25-year war, making their daily life a hellish struggle. As the war continues to intensify, the family is forced to migrate west to the city of Istanbul. While Haydar and Isa Altun decide to stay in Turkey with their young children, Davut Altun and his family migrate north to Norway, enlisting the help of smugglers. They eventually reach their destination and find work in a supermarket, but life as refugees proves relentless. Back in Istanbul, Haydar watches over the family as his wife undergoes an operation due to pregnancy complications. Their son makes friends with a group of transvestites, helping him to understand why he has felt different all of his life. While liberating, his newfound identity is seen as a disgrace to the rest of his family, leading him to flee from the abuse it produces.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, sentimental, captivating, clever, touching, serious, gloomy, crying
Best tv shows and movies like I Saw the Sun (2009):
Similar in 75%
Mila from Mars (2004)
Plot Summary:
Fleeing an abusive relationship, Mila, a teen prostitute, finds herself in a border town, pregnant, alone, and, to her surprise, welcome. The remote village is on a marijuana plantation run by a group of elderly men and women. Not having known much kindness, she goes into emotional hiding, but by the time the baby is born she has a new life and love. Her past, however, is not far behind.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Bulgaria
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, realistic, offbeat
Similar in 79%
The Towrope (2012)
Plot Summary:
In this poetic, richly allegorical debut by Colombian director William Vega, a teenage girl flees to a rundown inn after being driven from her home in the Andean highlands by civil war, as the violence engulfing the country creeps ever closer to her remote refuge. (TIFF).
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 767
Genere: Drama
Country: Colombia, France, Mexico
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, rough, serious, realistic, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 90%
Desert Dream (2007)
Plot Summary:
This film takes place in a remote area, a desert region situated somewhere between the Mongolia and Chinese border. The town has become nearly void of all inhabitants except for Hangai, who works obsessively to plant trees in the desert area. Hangai’s own wife has recently left him, as their daughter became increasingly ill. While Hangai wallows in solitude, a North Korean refugee arrives at his doorstep with her son. They ask for shelter and Hanghai obliges. Although the trio can’t even speak a common language, they are able to communicate nonethless and work together to plant trees. It seems Hanghai is attracted to Soon Hee, but she doesn’t feel quite the same way. Then a Mongolian soldier stationed at a nearby camp, befriends the trio and the dynamics of their relationship start to change.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 243
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea, France, Mongolia
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: realistic, captivating, psychological, atmospheric, touching, serious
Similar in 89%
For a Moment, Freedom (2008)
Plot Summary:
Centers on a group of weary Middle Eastern refugees who have made their way to Turkey to apply for European visas.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 661
Genere: Drama
Country: Austria, France
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, captivating, road movie, clever, fast
Similar in 82%
The Dark Side of Love (2012)
Plot Summary:
Two brothers on different life paths, a gay waiter with a crush on an eligible bachelor and a drug addict in a twisted dependent relationships with his girlfriend, reunite to mourn the death of their mother.
IMDB Rating: 3.9
IMDB Votes: 178
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: psychological, realistic, sentimental, serious, captivating, touching, contemplative, gloomy, crying
Similar in 78%
Edi (2002)
Plot Summary:
No overview found.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Poland
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, emotional, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 82%
My Australia (2011)
Plot Summary:
City of Lodz in Poland, after the Second World War. Two brothers, Tadek and Andrzej, grow up without a father, and their mother, so busy at work, does not notice when the boys join a rowdy and anti-Semitic organization.Only when during a fight one of the boys gets hurt, she realizes what is going on. Then she decides to leave Poland together with her family and go to... Australia. At the end of the trip it comes out that the goal was not to reach Australia but Israel. Boys become aware of their and their family roots.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 101
Genere: Drama
Country: Israel, Poland
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, realistic
Similar in 87%
Love in Another Language (2009)
Plot Summary:
Onur, who has been deaf since birth, works as a librarian. His father had left him and his mother when he was seven, and Onur has always blamed himself for this. Although being able to speak, he has chosen to stay silent because of the pitying looks of the people around him. At his friend Vedat's engagement party, he meets Zeynep, who later finds out about Onur's hearing disability, but is not bothered by it. She is forced by her overbearing father to leave home and gets a job at a call-center. Having to speak on the phone all day to people she doesn't know, Zeynep finds peace with Onur, who she communicates with perfectly without speaking.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: realistic, emotional, psychological, sentimental, captivating, eros, touching, serious
Similar in 87%
Letter to the King (2014)
Plot Summary:
In Letter to the King we meet a group of refugees, all with their own agendas, on an excursion to Oslo. A young man about to be deported visits his former employers to collect his off-the-books salary, a martial arts expert is looking for work, a young woman is haunted by the past and out for vengeance and an old man named Mirza is busy writing a letter to the king to get his final wish granted. An altogether urgent and nuanced portrait of a motley group of individuals, too often regarded as a homogeneous group.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 255
Genere: Drama
Country: Norway, United Arab Emirates
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, realistic, sincere, anthology, bleak, gloomy
Similar in 78%
Yasmin (2004)
Plot Summary:
In England, the Pakistanis Yasmin lives two lives in two different worlds: in her community, she wears Muslin clothes, cooks for her father and brother and has the traditional behavior of a Muslin woman. Further, she has a non-consumed marriage with the illegal immigrant Faysal to facilitate the British stamp in his passport, and then divorce him. In her job, she changes her clothes and wears like a Westerner, is considered a standard employee and has a good Caucasian friend who likes her. After the September, 11th, the prejudice in her job and the treatment of common people makes her take side and change her life.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 786
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, UK
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, sincere, touching
Similar in 77%
A Perfect Son (2000)
Plot Summary:
A man's terminal illness reunites him with his estranged brother.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 361
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, serious, emotional, independent film, sincere, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Last Winter (2011)
Plot Summary:
A young farmer in Central France tries to sustain his spiritual connection to the land amid the crushing pressures of modern agriculture in this brooding drama.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 187
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, serious, realistic, captivating, gloomy
Similar in 75%
Autumn (2008)
Plot Summary:
A man struggles after his release from ten years as a political prisoner.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, Germany
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: psychological, atmospheric, serious, realistic, art house, political, sad, bleak, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 90%
Macondo (2014)
Plot Summary:
A drama centered on an 11-year-old Chechnyan refugee living in Vienna whose life is thrown into disarray when a friend of his deceased father materializes.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 310
Genere: Drama
Country: Austria
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 89%
Sivas (2014)
Plot Summary:
Establishing a bleak village in Eastern Turkey as its setting, Sivas features the story of Aslan, an eleven-year-old boy, and Sivas, a weathered fighting dog who develop a strong relationship after Aslan finds Sivas wounded in a ditch, left to die.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany, Turkey
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, touching, captivating, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 87%
The White Angel (2007)
Plot Summary:
Beyaz Melek’ filmi; bir aşkın öyküsüdür.Bu aşk öyküsü, iki insanın birbirine duyduğu aşk değil, bir grup insanın hayata ve birbirlerine duyduğu aşkın ve sevginin hikayesidir.Filmde, doğudan batıya, mekteplisinden köylüsüne, gencinden yaşlısına sevginin her türlü motifi hem duygusal hem de esprili bir dille anlatılır.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, psychological, captivating, sentimental, serious
Similar in 84%
Sebbe (2010)
Plot Summary:
Duct tape, electrical cables, trigger, explosives. Sebbe never planned to build a bomb. It just happened. Sebbe is 15 years old and lives with his mother in an apartment that is too narrow. He does his best. He never strikes back. Sebbe loves his mother because he knows nothing else. In the junkyard the dream is alive, and in the hands of Sebbe, dead objects come to life. Here he has the power to create. Here he is free - but alone. His isolation grows as his world shrinks, until one day he is completely isolated with no other than his mother. And when she falls, everything falls.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 79 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, captivating, realistic, tense, mind bending, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 79%
When We Leave (2010)
Plot Summary:
Umay is a young woman of Turkish descent, fighting for an independent and self-determined life in Germany against the resistance of her family. Her struggle initiates a dynamic, which results in a life-threatening situation.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 119 min
Plot tags: disturbing, emotional, sincere, serious, psychological, captivating, cute, atmospheric, realistic
Similar in 75%
Silent Waters (2003)
Plot Summary:
Ayesha is a widow with a secret past, living with her beloved son Saleem in a small town in Pakistan close to the Indian border. When the fires of Islamic nationalism invade their tranquil lives, Saleem and a few of the town's other young men are soon gripped by a religious fervour, and they attempt to bring radical Islamic law to their friends and neighbours. After a group of Sikh pilgrims arrive in town, tensions reach boiling point as Ayesha's haunted past comes rushing back.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Pakistan, France, Germany
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: serious, touching, emotional, realistic, poignant
Similar in 82%
Waiting for the Clouds (2004)
Plot Summary:
Ayse/Eleni who is a member of a Greek family in Turkey is forced to immigrate from Trabzon to Mersin in her early ages. However, the events that happen cause her to face her own past.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 960
Genere: Drama
Country: Turkey, France, Germany, Greece
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: captivating, emotional, realistic, psychological, atmospheric, touching, epic, serious, gloomy, intercultural
Similar in 79%
Back to School Mom (2015)
Plot Summary:
Mary Thomas, a free-spirited musician, has spent the past two decades traveling the world, but at age 41 she decides to go back to college and finish her degree so that, for once, she can finally finish something she started. Back at her old university, she becomes close friends with her popular and charming "peer tutor" -- only to learn that he is actually the son she gave up 20 years earlier.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 162
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: sentimental, serious, realistic, touching, sincere, captivating
Similar in 83%
The God of Wood (2010)
Plot Summary:
Yao (Madi Diocou) and Moroccan Rachid (Soufiane Ouaarab) arrive illegally in Valencia, Spain, and separate. Yao sells pirated DVDs in the street and wanders disconsolately around the barrio until he glimpses divorcee Maria Luisa (Marisa Paredes) working in her boutique. High-strung and irritable, Maria lives with her gay son, Rober (Nao Albet), who, like many other things in life, is a disappointment to her. Rachid, meanwhile, is doing just fine working as a hairstylist in a beauty salon; Rober is hopelessly in love with him. When Yao starts sleeping in Rober's flat, a confrontation between him and Maria suddenly becomes inevitable, and when it comes, what could have been an embarrassment is actually handled with grace.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 152
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: realistic, emotional, sentimental, psychological, captivating, touching, serious, sexual, sexy
Similar in 88%
Darker Than Midnight (2014)
Plot Summary:
Davide is different from the other teenagers. Something makes him look like a girl. Davide is fourteen when he runs away from home. His intuition leads him to choose Villa Bellini, a park in Catania, as a refuge. The park is a world in itself, a world of the marginalized, to which the rest of the city turns a blind eye. But one day the past catches up and Davide has to face the most difficult choice, this time alone.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 355
Genere: Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: touching, serious, captivating, realistic, queer cinema
Similar in 85%
The Deserted Station (2002)
Plot Summary:
On a pilgrimage to Mashad from Tehran, a couple's transportation breaks down, far from any major town. The husband, a photographer, seeks help at a nearby village and encounters a teacher who offers to help. Whilst the husband and teacher go off to find a spare part, the wife, who used to be a teacher, takes over the teaching lessons in the village. It is clear that the children live there, in this strange deserted place, without any men, save the teacher and an old signal guard. As the day draws on, the children help to bring a new hope and life into the wife's heart.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 649
Genere: Drama
Country: Iran
Duration: 88 min
Plot tags: psychological, sentimental, touching, serious, islamic, sincere, thought provoking, realistic, contemplative
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Home Again (2012)
Plot Summary:
Returning to a "home" they hardly know after being deported from their adopted countries for minor criminal offenses, three people from very different backgrounds try to make a new life for themselves, in Jamaica in this gutsy drama from writer-director Sudz Sutherland. (TIFF).
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 428
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: thought provoking, realistic, serious, captivating, psychological, gloomy, independent film
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Under the Starry Sky (2013)
Plot Summary:
The debut feature from Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Dyana Gaye charts the interconnected destinies of three far-flung sojourners across three continents. A quiet drama, about the anxieties of negotiating journeying to foreign countries and making a place for oneself in the world.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 92
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium, Senegal
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic
Similar in 84%
Lebanon, Pa. (2010)
Plot Summary:
Will, a charming 35-year-old Philadelphia ad man, heads to Lebanon, Pa. to bury his recently deceased father. He forms an unexpected friendship with CJ, his bright, newly pregnant 17-year-old cousin. As Will becomes interested in CJ's married teacher and CJ confronts her conflicted father, both struggle with formidable decisions about the path their lives will take. Can we vault our differences and meet in the middle? This bittersweet comic drama tenderly explores the cultural divide in America through the lives of one extended family.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 584
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: realistic, sentimental, psychological, captivating, sincere, clever, touching, serious, independent film
Similar in 78%
Cet amour-l? (2001)
Plot Summary:
Cet Amour-là is an intimate portrait of a legendary love affair. Set against the beauty of the Breton seaside, it is also a film that revels in the insights that Marguerite Duras' writing affords.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 367
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: psychological, emotional, sentimental, sincere, serious, captivating, clever, realistic, talky, gloomy
Similar in 82%
Brick Lane (2007)
Plot Summary:
The grind of daily life as a Brick Lane Bangladessi as seen through the eyes of Nazneen (Chatterjee), who at 17 enters an arranged marriage with Chanu (Kaushik). Years later, living in east London with her family, she meets a young man Karim (Simpson).
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: realistic, psychological, contemplative, sentimental, captivating, intercultural, sincere, touching, serious, independent film
Similar in 84%
Colossal Youth (2006)
Plot Summary:
After the Portuguese government demolishes his slum and relocates him to a housing project on the outskirts of Lisbon, 75-year-old Cape Verde immigrant Ventura wanders between his new and old homes, reconnecting with people from his past.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Portugal, France, Switzerland
Duration: 156 min
Plot tags: contemplative, sincere, thought provoking, touching, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, slow cinema, bleak